Everything about Historical Whodunnit totally explained
The
historical whodunnit is a sub-genre of both the
historical novel and the
mystery novel, in which the central plot involves a crime (almost always a murder) and the setting is historical. The "detective" may be a real-life historical figure, eg.
Socrates,
Jane Austen,
Mozart, or an imaginary character.
The first known author to have written anything that might be described as a historical
whodunnit is
Melville Davisson Post, whose "
Uncle Abner" stories were serialised in American newspapers from 1911 onwards. It wasn't until 1943 that
Lillian de la Torre, an American mystery writer, did something similar with
Dr Johnson and
Boswell, casting the two famous literary figures into roles similar to Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. In
1950,
John Dickson Carr produced a novel called
The Bride of Newgate, set during the
Napoleonic Wars, and this may be called the first full-length historical whodunnit. While
Georgette Heyer is generally thought of as the author of
regency romance novels, a number of her books, such as
The Talisman Ring (
1936), are actually historical mysteries with a romance subplot.
Such stories remained an oddity, and the current trend for historical whodunnits only really began in the late 1970s with the success of
Ellis Peters and her
Brother Cadfael novels, set in medieval
Shrewsbury.
Umberto Eco's
The Name of the Rose (
1980) was a one-off that helped popularise the concept. Although authors such as
Anne Perry wrote in the genre during the next decade, it wasn't until about 1990 that the genre's popularity saw a fairly quick ascent with works such as
Lindsey Davis's
Falco novels, set in the
Roman Empire of
Vespasian;
Elizabeth Peters's
Amelia Peabody novels, in which the main character isn't only a Victorian lady but an early feminist and an
archaeologist working in early 20th century
Egypt;
Steven Saylor's "
Roma Sub Rosa" novels, set in the
Roman Republic at the time of
Julius Caesar; and
P. C. Doherty various series, including
The Sorrowful Mysteries of Brother Athelstan,
the Hugh Corbett medieval mysteries, partly indebted to the
hardboiled tradition, and
the Canterbury Tales of Mystery and Murder.
Further Information
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